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Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Balancing Research Facts and Fiction

You have to do it right. You’ve got to make it all seem authentic,
so you need to find out how things were at the time. The temptation can be,
however, to try to squeeze every fact in. It’s also really quite difficult to decide
whether that is what you are doing.

I’m still carrying on with the Hani thread, and Clara Lehrs
is becoming feistier by the minute. I’m really getting to know this character
well. That made confirming that she went to Treblinka yesterday all the more poignant.

In today’s writing alone I’ve had to consult:

the perpetual calendar

the timeline for 1939

my notes on food rationing

my notes on conscription for young German men during World
War II.

I’ve also had to find a German food ration card.

I hope I’ve also brought enough tension into the plot

It is so very hard to judge whether that balance of story
and of setting is correct.

Still, I’m sharing some of this with a critique group tomorrow
and possibly some more with another group nearer the end of the month.